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What metric to watch?
I got diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes a month ago after routine blood tests showed an A1C of 13.
I have a Stelo, and am seeing pretty dramatic changes in my numbers through diet and exercise, but I am also concerned about the amount of time I am spending obsessing about it, and feeling anxious. I feel as though I need to pick one or two metrics to watch closely.
If you were going to pick one or two, which of these would you say is most important:
Time in range
Average blood glucose
Fasting blood glucose (I measure with a fingerstick each a.m.)
Highest point it goes to
“Spikes” which is what Stelo calls it when your number rises dramatically in a short period of time
Also how do you balance keeping your blood sugar in range with other aspects of healthy diet? For example, if I include fruit in my meals my blood sugar rises more quickly after, but of course there are benefits to fruit too! Similarly, if I eat high fat foods my blood sugar looks great, but at what cost to my heart? How do you strike a balance?
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@jim18
Yes, I too have a slightly high fasting reading before breakfast, and my reading before lunch is generally fifteen to twenty points lower. Of course we are more active in those hours, too.
And when we wake up our bodies get a dose of cortisol to help us get moving and this might bump our BG for an hour or so.
@anonymom3 said:
>I wake up, my cgm says my blood sugar is 152, which is in the range I
>usually fall in the morning. I test and get 218 or 72, something that is
>very far from 152. I think "Wow, what is that about?" I immediately test
>again and get 148. I test a third time, and get 143. Meanwhile a few
>minutes later my cgm reads 150, and the curve stays steady till I eat
>an hour or two later, so it isn't an issue of my cgm lagging.
When you say "I test" you mean finger sticks?
I just asked Google and it says that the CGM generally tests much more often than it reports, so every reading it gives is already an average over several minutes.
If you are getting that much variation in finger sticks, I'd ask which meter are you using, and you might want to try another. My Contour Next meter is more accurate than my CVS meter, but as I said even the CVS is acceptable, but you might slightly discount any readings that are very high or very low, it exaggerates the distances from "normal".
I seldom retest within a couple of minutes and when I do I try to switch meters, how much variation one can really see in just a minute or two I don't know, and I guess even the CGM won't tell you either (unless it has a magic mode that is meant to do just that!). Wait, I'll go ask Google that, too.
Aha. First, Google points out that the CGM measures interstitial, and that changes more slowly than blood glucose tested by finger sticks. Second it says some CGMs might report shorter periods on the app but only stores 5 (or 15) minutes averages that it officially reports. Also it says that anomalous readings are more likely caused by contamination on your hand, or squeezing the finger too hard and diluting the blood with interstitial fluid.
Do you wash hands or use a little alcohol wipe pad to clean the finger, and also let the alcohol evaporate back off? When they gave me the meter kit they didn't give me the wipes until I asked!
HTH
@carbcounter
That does help! I did not know I shouldn’t push the blood out, maybe that’s it?
@anonymom3
A little push is OK but really crushing it is bad, might lower the reading.
I'll note that also, when you get a really small drop but it still works, I've seen that give a lower than expected reading. And that's on my "good" meter. The "bad" meter actually is happy with a much smaller drop.
These things are a long way from foolproof, lol. Fortunately it mostly doesn't matter and we're lucky to have them, as nobody did 30 or so years ago.